Damian
Ash coated every surface of the house like gray snow. Old furniture stood ruined and blackened, rotten specters. The place smelled old and smokey, and sound was muted. Every step Damian took was tempered by the powdery coating underfoot. He spotted Samara's small bootprints leading up the stairs.
He would follow. He would follow her to the ends of the earth.
He didn't dare call her name. The old wood groaned under his feet and with every step he feared it might fall away. But she had run this way, up the stairs and across the wide landing. Rain poured through the caved-in roof, dripping with old branches. He ducked beneath the dribbling waterfall, his eyes trained for any movement.
Caution told him to pull out the pistol, to have it ready in his hands. He had pointed it at her once, and he had taken aim at others far too many times. Not this time. He wouldn't lose her. He repeated it to himself, over and over, as if to convince his own mind it were true.
He wouldn't lose her.
But he was screaming it in the face of doubt.
"Damian..."
Her voice was gentle, almost a whisper. He shouldn't have been able to even hear it over the sound of the rain and groaning of the house. But it was unmistakable. How many times had he heard her whisper his name, just like that - or sleepily in the morning, or exhausted before bed, or heavily in the throes of passion? Her voice, wrapped around those familiar syllables - he paused. His hands were shaking. Fear - no, terror - was creeping up and overtaking him. Fear of what awaited him, fear of the reaper outside, fear of Samara herself. Fear of his Amma's prophecies, her warnings.
But fear didn't matter now, did it?
He crept down the hall, carefully avoiding the places where fire had eaten its way through the floorboards. It wasn't supposed to be this way. All his training told him to wait for help, to not go in unaided, to return to Abraham and see if he was conscious enough to speak. But fate demanded otherwise. He wouldn't turn his back on her, not with the reaper waiting at her door.
At the end of the hall, scorched black double doors stood ajar. He could see her there, crouched at the far side of the room, huddled over, rocking gently. His Samara. She was still there, she had to be. She would fight, she would know his face...
The doors creaked as he pushed them further open, and a cloud of ash puffed into the air. Samara stopped moving.
"Samara, I'm here," he let the authority out in his voice, the tone that had always made her smile, that had comforted her. "You're alright."
"Damian," her voice was pitiful, muffled in her hands. "Damian...please..." She began to sob.
He breathed a sigh of relief as he hurried to her side. She had fought them, she prevailed. He should have known she would...
He reached out a tender hand to grasp her shoulder and help her up. But as her face turned to him, there were no tears there. There was a wide smile, black eyes, and a cleaver gripped in her hand.
"Oh, Damian," she whined, and now her voice was a mockery, growing deeper, darker. "Didn't I tell you not to fucking follow me?"
He barely had time to dodge back, narrowly avoiding the swing of her cleaver. It hissed through the air, inches from his face as he stumbled. She flipped it in her hand and sliced again - a downward arc that could have opened his chest from collarbone to hip. Again he dodged her, still trying to regain his balance, still trying to make himself breath through his mounting panic. Her eyes were black - solid black, emotionless. Nothing human - nothing of the Samara he knew.
"Samara stop!" He leapt back, dangerously close to the edge of a crumbling hole in the floorboards. The wood groaned in complaint; with every step he could feel it bow under his weight. Samara's head was low, her teeth bared. She stalked him slowly, animal-like, her eyes darting to his every movement.
Inhuman. A predator. He'd seen such signs before.
But she was in there. She had to be.
"Listen to me, Samara. You're stronger than this. Show me you're still there."
She leapt toward him, clearing the hole in the floor with a single bound, slashing as she came. He clambered over the ruinous frame of the old bed, and automatically his hand reached for his pistol. No...no...don't pull it out...he hadn't lost her...
"Heed my words, demons!" he reached deep, trying to summon up the power in his words without losing the concentration to watch her every move. She needed to be restrained, but he couldn't even get close. "Leave this woman! Her body is not yours, her life is not yours!"
Samara laughed as she crawled over the bed. Even the structure of her face seemed to have changed - her skin was almost gray, the angles of her skull sharpened.
"To whom do you speak, exorcist?" A dozen voices seemed to echo from her at once. "Names, names, what are our names?" She laughed louder, louder, until it was almost a scream. "You have no power here!"
She jumped from the bed. Her caught her arm and her cleaver glanced off his shoulder, slicing through cloth and flesh. They fell hard, their combined weight cracking through the weak wood and sending them plummeting. They struck the next floor - he grappled with her, the pain in his arm distant - the wood splintered again - they fell further still and landed on the damp earth of the dark cellar. It took all his strength to shove her back and rise quickly enough to get in another strike, a softened blow to her face. He had pulled his strength, at the last second, he couldn't bear it -
She shook herself, barely phased. A small dribble of blood seeped from her split lip and she licked it away with a wild gleam in her dark eyes. Damian tried to put distance between them, dodging back among the dilapidated cobweb-draped shelves that lined the basement.
"Come up out of her," he muttered, as Samara stalked ever closer. "Heed these words. You are inclined to obey. This body and flesh are not yours."
Was he doing what was right? Or should he have been calling out to her instead, calling to Samara, encouraging her to fight? Could she even hear him?
Was she even there anymore?
Out of the corner of his eye he saw the two reapers at the base of the cellar stairs: Lijiali, cold and calm, Kiiji in chains, wide-eyed beside her.
Kill her, for she never should have lived.
"And where do you expect us to go, exorcist?" Samara growled, in a dozen voices all dripping with hatred. "Have you forgotten that we are bound to this flesh, scarred into it? You cannot cast us out, for we cannot leave." She laughed, and the sound was so foreign, so unlike her, that it made his chest clench with pain. He wanted to rage, to scream at her. He wanted to rip into the beings that had overtaken her, destroy them, pound them apart with his bare hands...
But he couldn't. They were her. He could not separate them. He could not hurt the beasts without also harming her. He cried out in sheer despair as she lunged again. In desperation he seized a splintered plank and swung - it caught Samara across the head and sent her sprawling. Her body contorted as she rose, joints popping, bleeding from a fresh gash along her hairline.
"Samara please..." He couldn't watch her like this. He couldn't see her so gone, overtaken, destroyed. How long was he to fight her? Was he to beat her relentlessly, was he to destroy her body as her mind had been destroyed?
"Samara...fight them...please..." But there was no recognition in her eyes. Nothing human. She felt nothing, only the pleasure to laugh at his pain. She'd kill him...
No. No, Samara wouldn't kill him. She hadn't wanted to. She'd tried to protect him, tried to run. But Damian had made his choice, as the reaper said. He'd chosen to go after her, he'd chosen to hope...
Samara wouldn't kill him. But Samara was gone.
What he saw now...the mockery before him...her corpse being defiled. That's all it was. Her corpse in their control. He wouldn't let them go on. He couldn't. He wouldn't leave her in torment.
His pistol was heavy. It felt so familiar in his hand, reassuring, an old friend. But his hands were shaking. No breath was enough to ease the ache in him. His vision blurred so that her contorted face was just a smudge through the tears.
A million doubts rushed through him. He could leave her, he could wait, he could find a way. He could go back to Abraham. But the reaper waited. The reaper would not hesitate. Damian had considered what it might be like to have a reaper take him - after all, Kiiji had been awaiting the opportunity for years. He contemplated it as fearful, as peaceful, as painful, or calm. But he wasn't going to take that chance, not on Samara.
He would see her buried, with the dignity she deserved. Dressed in clothes she liked, with the color she loved on those lips...
He couldn't take aim if he couldn't see. The tears spilled over and his eyes cleared but more came. He kept hoping to see some spark of life in her, some sign that she was not gone. But even her face he barely recognized now. The demons had her, in totality. She was readying to charge again, crouched low, a predator ready to strike. They wanted nothing more than to kill him in that moment, to have their vengeance...
He raised his arm. It felt so wrong. One shot through the head. It would be quick. Painless. But what if? She wouldn't suffer. He couldn't let her suffer. He wouldn't let a reaper have her, nor the demons. She deserved better than to be the fodder of such beasts.
Samara...his Samara...he should have watched her more closely. He should known, he should have protected her. He would have fallen to his knees at the reapers feet and begged, begged for more time to save her. But when he glanced back, Lijiali's face was as still as stone. There was no pity there, no mercy. She awaited merely to see the outcome of the horrific choice she had given him.
Kill Samara, or allow her to be killed.
A sob choked him as Samara raised the cleaver again, running toward him, wild bloodlust on her face.
He'd failed her.
His finger tightened on the trigger.
He wouldn't fail her again.
A
/N: Holy crap, cliffhangers, I know, I'm sorry (not sorry :P) but I promise you won't wait a week for the next update! ♡